Do you love riding bikes, on and off road? Do you have some family or friends who share your passion? Team up * and enter the Cornwall AdventureCross! It's a weekend long event with free camping and 100km of beautiful riding.

The first Cornwall AdventureCross will allow 500 riders to spend the weekend in a family friendly cycling festival atmosphere at our base in the middle of beautiful Cornwall. On arrival, challenge yourself with a 1.5mile prologue time trial on Friday evening so we can award a yellow jersey to one of the more competitive types. Then settle into camp and visit our café in the adjacent leisure centre for the pasta party - an ideal way to fuel-up for the big challenge of a 100km Sportive relay ride on Saturday. The 100km is made up of three equal loops, shared in relay - one loop to each team mate. Many of the off road sections of the 100km ride are on private land and we will electronically time these segments to run a proper stage race, but of course you could just enjoy the Sportive ride and the wonderful views.

Back at base we'll award final winner's yellow jerseys once all those segments have been added on to your times.

Sunday... You want more? Or you want to be entertained instead? How about a proper cyclo-cross race? Yes, we're hosting the opening round of the South West Cyclo-Cross Series around your camp site! There are races for all age categories, and a one hour multi-lap lung buster for the elites. Feel free to enter the racing or just watch the whippet like heroes do their thing while you recover from your own exertions. You can stay and camp Sunday night too if you like.

What you get:

FREE CAMPING, PROLOGUE TIME TRIAL, SPORTIVE, TIMED SEGMENTS, YELLOW JERSEY, SPOT PRIZES, BRILLIANT SCENARY, GREAT TRAILS, SUNDAY'S RACE

Select entry options: (radio buttons)
Team of 3 £45
Team of 2 £45
Solo £30

A bit of background...

The steady rise of cyclo-cross bikes over recent years has given many of us the option to mix up serious road rides with cross country challenges. Iconic events like the "Three Peaks Cyclo-Cross" and the "Hell of the North Cotswolds" have long inspired old-skool hard-men, and now the equipment and culture has become accessible to everyone. AdventureCross partner Vin Cox is just one of many adventure cyclists who have used cyclo-cross bikes for long touring challenges. Vin and his Genesis Criox de Fer bike were featured in the 2012 Guinness Book of Records after cycling 18,000 miles around the world. He's also done the 3 Peaks cyclo-cross 10 times, and hosts the Mountain Mayhem 24 hour event too.

The AdventureCross event can be attempted on any bike. Typically we expect Cyclo-Cross or Mountain Bikes to lead the way, but seriously, if you want to ride a full carbon road bike like this guy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZmJtYaUTa0 we'll let you!

The bikes that inspired the event are the present generation of do-everything cyclo-cross bikes. Unlike the old race-only 'cross bikes, these can carry water bottles like a road bike. Most even have mudguard and pannier fittings like an old-school tourer. Disc brakes, lower gears, and pedals have come in from the mountain bike world. And the modern Adventure Cross bike can handle tyres ranging from skinny road slicks right through to almost 29er MTB spec.

Our first event, the Cornwall AdventureCross, will feature a classic cyclo-cross lap as the prologue time trail, so that will favour the classic setup. The big challenge though is Saturday's adventure; a long and tiring 100km team relay Sportive ride around exceptionally beautiful corners of the county. Some segments, mainly in the forests, of the adventure will be marked out and timed, so that the competitive fellows can chase that yellow jersey we awarded in the prologue. So here's the conundrum: Is it worth the extra effort needed to ride fatter tyres or even an MTB around the loop to get an advantage on the timed bits?

Here are some example "Adventure Cross" suitable bikes:

The start of something big.

This type of event will come to a a place near you. We hope that it can be the Adventure Cross team who deliver it, but whatever happens, this is your chance to be a pioneer.

The concept is rapidly growing. Germans already have something very like Adventure Cross, and in the 'States, "gravel racing" is the hot trend - that's there name for what we're starting here. Our organiser Vin Cox is off to compete in the "Trans-Iowa" gravel race and experiance 310 miles of dirt racing! Let's see what he brings back (other than a sore bum!).